Tender the Storm

Prologue: Blue Moon

The wind was cool and gentle. It fluttered the hem of Ginny's skirt, and she threw herself down into the grass, not caring that it was wet and would muddy her clothes.

She ought to have felt sad, or bereaved, maybe, but she felt nothing. There was no sadness and no tears inside her. She was too empty for that. The fighting had gone on for too long, and though now it was over, her mind was too numb to comprehend it. Four years, it had been. Their old world was destroyed. What was left of it was wide and empty and lonely.

So lonely. Harry had come back, but he was not the laughing, boyish brother-figure that had left four years ago with his two friends in search of high adventure, and besides, he belonged to Hermione now. And Ron would never come back.

She closed her eyes. It was good to be lying down, the burden on her young shoulders relieved somewhat by the solid earth beneath her. It was good to be free, free of all emotion and all pain.

There were yellow primroses growing all around her, their sweet fragrance filling the air. She breathed in deeply, and something stirred in her, a longing she couldn't place a name to, as though she had lost something but did not what it was she had lost.

Footsteps sounded, but she was too weary to open her eyes. She knew who it was, anyway; knew it in the light, even way he stepped.

"Weasley?" His voice was uncharacteristically hesitant and uncertain. "Potter told me about your parents, and about your brother. I - "

"Don't tell me you're sorry," whispered Ginny, taking in a deep, shaking breath. The fragrance of primroses filled her nose, assaulting her senses. Some of the tension in her temples eased. "Whatever you do, don't tell me you're sorry." Wisps of hair blew across her cheek, and she sensed him lowering himself into the grass beside her.

"Please," she whispered, again.

She felt his fingers grazing her cheek softly, and felt something acrid rise in her throat. Emotion shook her from head to foot. Hope - despair - sorrow - fear - every passion that had been slowly sucking her dry for four long years threatened to finally overwhelm her. She drew a shaking breath.

"Look at me, Ginny," he said, dragging her limp form up. She leaned bonelessly against him, but did not open her eyes. His shirt was soft against her face. He was warm and solid, like the earth beneath her was.

"Look at me, Ginny," he said again, softly. It seemed to him that she was trying to escape him by retreating into her thoughts. "Damn you, Ginny, look at me."

He tilted her chin up, and her eyes fluttered open unwillingly. The moon moved from behind the clouds. His gaze traced the flare of her brow, the straight slope of her nose, the shape of her mouth. He had never before thought her pretty, but now he saw that she had the makings of a great beauty. But it didn't matter, for the things about her that so intrigued him were already there - the smile like sunlight, the girlish, innocent laugh, the gamine warmth. She smelled the way she looked - warm, like yellow primroses and sunlight and laughter. In his mind's eye, she was always laughing, laughing and happy and safe.

She was not laughing now.

The lake brushed the shore in a gentle caress. "Why are you here, Malfoy?" she asked, searching his face. She spoke as if her throat hurt, and her heart was in her eyes. Life hadn't taught her yet how to keep her feelings hidden. Life hadn't been cruel to her, until now.

"I'm here to say goodbye," he said, his voice deliberately cold. The smell of primroses wafted toward him, borne on the wind. "I leave for France tomorrow."

She turned her face out of his grasp, putting her hands against his chest and pushing him away slowly and gently, before crawling back into the grass, curling up as though, somehow, she could protect herself from - from what? he asked himself, reaching out to lightly touch a lock of stray red-gold hair that spilled over her shoulders.

The moon rose beyond the treetops like a coin of old, old gold. Ginny watched it from inside the crook of her arm. "It's a blue moon tonight," she said, and her voice trembled, half muffled in her cloak. "Have you ever heard the story of maiden and the shepherd boy?"

His grasp found hers, and he held her hand tightly. Her face was buried in the grass, so that all he could see was the waves of red gold hair cascading over her shoulders and down her back. When she continued her voice was high and thin with strain. "Once there was a beautiful maiden who was loved by a handsome shepherd boy. But she was captured by a witch, who turned her into a hare, casting a spell so that the only time the girl could assume human form again was when the moon rode the sky in its full glory for the second time in one month. She thought she was making it impossible for the girl ever to be human again, but she had forgotten about the nights of the blue moon - those rare months when there are two full moons. And so from time to time the bewitched hare became a girl again, and she and her shepherd boy would meet . . . once in a blue moon."

Her voice cracked over the last words, and she let out a small sob. "Take me with you," she said.

"Ginny," he breathed. Something swelled within his chest. What she was asking, what she wanted, was impossible. It couldn't have been more impossible if he were a shepherd and she the maiden that turned into a hare. At least then they could have had their nights of the blue moon, he thought bitterly. "You need more than I can give you. You deserve more."

"But you don't understand," she said, in that unnaturally high voice. She was on the point of hysteria, he saw. "You don't understand. Oh, God . . ." A ragged gasp of laughter tore out of her throat, turning into a sob.

She lifted her head. She was still kneeling, her hair falling like a veil to the grass. The warm eyes that looked up at him shone with a fierce light, a fierce emotion. Something he didn't understand. Something that struck terror somewhere deep in his soul.

If he still had a soul.

She was looking at him as if he were the most wonderful man who ever lived. She had no idea what he was really like, the things he had done . . . he knew that if he took her with him, she would only end up leaving him someday. He knew that as surely as he knew that dark night followed even the sunniest of days, and warm, sweet summer turned into bitter winter.

"You don't know - " he began again, but her passionate voice stopped him.

"But I do! I know what you are going to say, and it doesn't matter." A tear had the temerity to attempt a slide down her cheek, and she dashed it away. "You are the man I want to marry. I don't care what you are, or what you think you are, or how young I am, or how old you feel. I don't care - "

His voice lashed out like a whip. "Well, I do! When I marry, it will be a woman, not a scrawny carrottop not even out of her teens. She'll be a woman with breeding and money, not some schoolgirl without even two beans to boil together to make soup."

She was still as though he had struck her, and there was no sound but the whisper of the water across earth and stone.

"But I love you," she said at last, so low her voice might have been part of the murmur of the lake. Her head drooped forward.

His mouth was a thin, harsh line against his face. "Too bloody bad, Weasley. Because I don't love you."

She wasn't crying. But he wished she would. It was unnatural for a person to be in so much pain and not cry. But it was better to hurt her once, cleanly, than to hurt her over the years a thousand times, a million times, in a thousand ways, a million ways. That warm and shining light he'd seen in her eyes wouldn't last. It would die someday and she would hate him then and hate herself for having been such a fool. And he didn't want to be around when that happened because he would not be able to bear it.

He didn't say anything as he stood slowly to his feet. There was nothing left to be said. Instead, he turned and walked away.

He stopped before the bend in the path and turned to look back. She was leaning her head against an ancient oak, as though somehow its strength and wisdom could help ease some of her pain, and the yellow primroses that twined around its mighty trunk gleamed against her bright hair. She held a single blossom in her hands, and her fingers tore restlessly at it. The pale broken petals drifted to the dark grass like falling stars. Her eyes were closed, but from the way the moonlight glinted off her cheeks he knew she was crying. He must have heard that wonderful, carefree laugh of hers a thousand times over the past year. He wished his last memory of her didn't have to be one of tears . . . tears over him. She was just so damned young, too young to know better than to let herself care for a man like him.

Young enough to get over him, he thought.

Someday, maybe, he could walk along a lakeshore path fringed in ancient oaks and not think of this moment.

But he knew that as long as he lived, he would never be able to bear the sight of yellow primroses.